fertilizers

Fertilizers from wastewater sludge

July 30, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Sewage sludge is the mud-like residue that is produced as a byproduct during wastewater treatment. In the U.S., sewage sludge is referred to as biosolids after it’s been treated. The term is meant to distinguish the higher quality, treated sludge from raw sludge and from sludge that contains large quantities of environmental pollutants.

However, according to a new study by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, fertilizers manufactured from the sludgy leftovers of wastewater treatment processes can still contain traces of potentially hazardous organic chemicals.

The research, which was recently published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, provides one of the most comprehensive looks at the chemical composition of biosolids across the country.

Biosolids do contain valuable organic matter and nutrients, including nitrogen and phosphorus. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, more than half of the 3.76 million tons of biosolids produced in the U.S. in 2022 fertilized agricultural lands, golf courses, and other landscaped areas.

In the study, the research team screened 16 samples of biosolids from wastewater treatment facilities in nine U.S. and three Canadian cities. The researchers then created lists of the chemicals found in each sample. They found 92 common compounds that were present in 80% or more of the samples. The researchers cross-referenced those 92 compounds against the EPA’s CompTox Chemical Dashboard to identify which chemicals were most likely to pose threats to human health or the environment.

The findings could help the EPA identify which organic compounds to investigate further and which chemical contaminants may need government regulation.

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Team Aims to Improve Safety of Fertilizers Made from Wastewater Sludge

Photo, posted November 2, 2011, courtesy of Susana Secretariat via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Golf courses gone wild

March 18, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Golf courses are a significant burden on the environment. The US has 16,000 golf courses which use 1.5 billion gallons of water a day and are treated with 100,000 tons of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium each year. In recent years, the golf industry has taken steps to lighten its environmental toll by using less water, introducing pollinator-friendly plants, and decreasing pesticide and fertilizer use. The US has more golf courses than any other country, accounting for 42% of all courses worldwide.

There is really an oversupply of golf courses and, as a result, more golf courses have closed than have opened since 2006. Most closed golf courses end up in the hands of commercial or residential developers, but some of them are allowed to return to nature.

For this to happen, there has to be a willing seller and, more importantly, a conservation-minded buyer who can afford both to purchase the land and to restore it to a natural state. There have been 28 former golf courses transformed into public green spaces between 2010 and the end of 2022. But that number seems to be growing.

In 2023, the former Cedar View Golf Course on the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake in upstate New York was bought by the Finger Lakes Land Trust. In California, places like Santa Barbara, Marin County, and even Palm Springs have all undertaken the transformation of former golf courses into public parklands.

Rewilding a golf course is undoubtedly a disappointment to local golfers, but it can bring big benefits to animals, plants, and people.

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After Shutting Down, These Golf Courses Went Wild

Photo, posted October 19, 2016, courtesy of Cabo Girao via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Bio-based products on the rise

January 30, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There is a growing global movement working towards replacing conventional synthetic products – ones that are toxic to make or use, difficult to recycle, and have large carbon footprints – with products made from plants, trees, or fungi that can be safely returned to the earth at the end of their useful life. This so-called bioeconomy is in its infant stages, but there is increasing interest in turning successful research into manufactured products.

One example is nylon. Nylon was created in the 1930s by DuPont. It has been used and continues to be used in a wide range of products. The problem with it is that it is made from petroleum, it doesn’t biodegrade, and producing it generates nitrous oxide, which is a problematic greenhouse gas.

A San Diego-based company called Genomatica has developed a plant-based nylon using biosynthesis, a process in which a genetically engineered microorganism ferments plant sugars to create a chemical intermediate that can be turned into the nylon-6 polymer, and then into textiles.

The impetus for developing bio-based products includes the growing public disgust at the mounting environmental toll of plastic, not the least of which is that people and animals are increasingly ingesting it. Coupled with this, there is a rapidly-growing torrent of funding, especially in the US and Europe, aimed at accelerating the transition away from products that are non-biodegradable, toxic, and that produce carbon emissions. Last September saw the launch of the National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative which will support research and development on such topics as the use of sustainable biomass and waste resources to make non-toxic, bio-based fuels, chemicals, and fertilizers.

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From Lab to Market: Bio-Based Products Are Gaining Momentum

Photo, posted May 27, 2010, courtesy of André C via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

How to reduce pollution from food production

January 17, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Present in animal manure and synthetic fertilizers, nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plant growth and is a critical input to enhance agricultural productivity on farms around the world. But excessive and inefficient use of this nutrient is widespread. In fact, up to 80% of it leaks into the environment, mostly in various polluting forms of nitrogen: ammonia and nitrogen oxides (which are harmful air pollutants), nitrous oxide (a potent greenhouse gas), and nitrate (which affects water quality).

A new report prepared for the United Nations has put forth some solutions to greatly reduce nitrogen pollution from agriculture in Europe. A group of researchers coordinated by the U.K. Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the European Commission, the Copenhagen Business School, and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment of The Netherlands produced the report.

In it, the research team puts forth its recipe to reduce nitrogen pollution in Europe. The report’s ingredients include:

Reducing by 50% the average European meat and dairy consumption
More efficient fertilizer application and manure storage
Reducing food production demand by reducing food waste by retailers and consumers
Better wastewater treatment to capture nitrogen from sewage
Adopting policies addressing food production and consumption to transition them towards more sustainable systems

Taking action to reduce nitrogen pollution will require a holistic approach involving farmers, policymakers, retailers, water companies, and individuals.

Do Europeans have an appetite for change?

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Scientists provide recipe to halve pollution from food production

Photo, posted March 10, 2022, courtesy of USDA NRCS Montana via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Perennial Rice | Earth Wise

December 9, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

People have been cultivating rice for more than 9,000 years. Cultivated rice is an annual crop which is often extended to two crops a year by a process called ratooning, which is cutting back annual rice to obtain a second, weaker harvest.

An extensive project involving multiple institutions in China, the U.S., and Australia has been developing perennial rice. The researchers developed it through hybridization, crossing a type of Asian domesticated annual rice with a wild perennial rice from Africa. Using modern genetic tools to identify candidate plants, the team identified a promising hybrid in 2007, planted large-scale field experiments in 2016, and released the first commercial perennial rice variety, called PR23, in 2018.

The researchers spent five years studying the performance of the perennial rice alongside annual rice on farms in China’s Yunnan Province. For the most part, the yield of the perennial rice was equivalent to that of annual rice over a period of four years.

Because farmers don’t have to plant rice each season, growing perennial rice requires almost 60% less labor and saves nearly half the costs of seed, fertilizer, and other inputs.

Perennial rice is already changing the lives of more than 55,000 smallholder farmers in southern China and Uganda. The economic benefits vary by location, but overall profit increases ranged from 17% to 161% over annual rice.

There are already three perennial rice varieties available to farmers, but researchers aren’t done refining the crop. They plan to use their methodology to enhance traits such as aroma, disease resistance, and drought tolerance to newer versions.

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Farmers in China, Uganda move to high-yielding, cost-saving perennial rice

Photo, posted February 25, 2002, courtesy of Matthieu Lelievre via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A Miracle Tree | Earth Wise

September 27, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The world needs to be fed without destroying the environment. We need to grow more trees to store more carbon on earth and reduce the amount in the atmosphere. But meanwhile, we decimate rainforests to produce palm oil and grow soybeans.

A startup company in California called Terviva thinks they have a solution. It’s called pongamia, which is an ordinary looking tropical tree. It produces beans packed with protein and oil, much like soybeans. However, it has the potential to produce much more nutrition per acre than soybeans and it is hardy enough to grow on pretty much any kind of land without the use of pesticides, fertilizers, or irrigation. In short, it is a miracle crop for a hot and hungry planet that is running out of fertile farmland and fresh water.

Pongamia is not a new or rare tree. It is common in India but grows all over the world. It is often planted as an ornamental here in the U.S.

The initial idea for making use of the hardy tree was to use its oil as a biofuel. The seeds of pongamia are known to have a bitter taste and disagreeable odor, which is why the seeds or oil were never used for human or animal feed. However, Terviva has developed a way to de-bitter pongamia oil. Once this is done, it becomes a golden-colored substitute for olive oil. It also has enormous potential as a protein for plant-based milks and meats, since it contains all nine essential amino acids.

Terviva has raised more than $100 million to further develop pongamia and is now partnering with Danone, a $25 billion multinational food company, to develop pongamia as a climate-friendly, climate-resilient, non-GMO alternative to soy and palm oil.

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This super-tree could help feed the world and fight climate change

Photo, posted December 15, 2015, courtesy of Lauren Gutierrez via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Climate Change And Farming Productivity | Earth Wise

May 3, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The future potential impacts of anthropogenic climate change on global agricultural systems has been well studied, but how human-caused climate change has already affected the agricultural sector is not as well understood. But a new study led by researchers at Cornell University and supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the National Science Foundation examined this issue.

Despite important agricultural breakthroughs in technology, fertilizer use and global trade during the past 60 years, it turns out that the climate crisis is already eroding farm productivity. According to the study, which was recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change, global farming productivity is 21% lower than it could have been without climate change. This is the equivalent of losing approximately seven years of farm productivity increases since the 1960s.

The researchers developed a model linking annual changes in weather and productivity with output from the latest climate models over six decades to quantify the effect of anthropogenic climate change on what economists call “total factor productivity.” This measure captures the overall productivity of the agricultural sector.

The research team reviewed 200 variations of the model, but the results remained largely consistent: anthropogenic climate change is already slowing down global food production. The researchers say the historical impacts of climate change have been larger in naturally warmer climates, like in parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Climate change is not some distant problem to solve in the future. It is already having an impact on the planet and it needs to be addressed now.

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Climate change cut global farming productivity 21% since 1960s

Photo, posted October 2, 2013, courtesy of the United Soybean Board via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Conspicuous Consumption

February 6, 2020 By EarthWise 2 Comments

Human civilization consumes vast amounts of material. The Circle Economy think tank actually puts some numbers on it. According to their latest report, the amount of material consumed by humanity has passed 100 billion tons every year. So, on average, every person on Earth uses more than 13 tons of materials per year.

That number has quadrupled since 1970, which is far faster than the population, which has only doubled during that time. In the past two years alone, consumption has jumped by more than 8%. While this has been going on, the proportion being recycled has been falling.

Of the 100 billion tons of materials, half of the total is sand, clay, gravel, and cement used for building, along with other minerals used for fertilizer. Coal, oil and gas make up 15% and metal ores 10%. The final quarter are plants and trees used for food and fuel. About 40% of all materials are turned into housing. A third of the annual materials consumed remain in use, such as in buildings or vehicles. But 15% is emitted into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases and a third is treated as waste.

The global emergencies of climate change and disappearing wildlife have been driven by the unsustainable extraction of fossil fuels, metals, building materials, and trees. The authors of the report warn that if we continue to treat the world’s resources as limitless, we are heading for a global disaster.

The Circle Economy think tank promotes the idea of a circular economy in which renewable energy supports systems where waste and pollution are reduced to zero. Some nations are taking steps towards circular economies, while others are not. This is a problem we can’t allow to be unaddressed.

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World Consumes 100 Billion Tons of Materials Every Year, Report Finds

Photo, posted March 13, 2015, courtesy of Joyce Cory via Flickr.

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Converting A Toxin Into An Industrial Chemical | Earth Wise

January 16, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Nitrogen dioxide is a prominent air pollutant produced by internal combustion engines burning fossil fuels as well as by a variety of industrial processes. It is a toxic material associated with a number of respiratory illnesses.

Researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK along with an international team of scientists have developed a new advanced material that can convert nitrogen dioxide from an exhaust gas stream into useful industrial chemical using only water and air.

The material is a metal-organic framework (or MOF) that provides a selective, fully reversible, and repeatable capability to capture nitrogen dioxide. MOFs are tiny three-dimensional structures that are porous and can trap gases inside as though there were tiny cages. MOFs have enormous amounts of surface area for their size. One gram of material can have a surface area as large as a football field.

The material, named MOF-520, can capture nitrogen dioxide at ambient temperatures and pressures and even at low concentration and during flow in the presence of moisture, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide. Such conditions are typical of the exhaust of internal combustion engines. In fact, the process works best at the typical temperature of automobile exhausts.

Once the nitrogen oxide is absorbed, treating the material with water in air converts it into nitric acid and restores the MOF for additional use. Nitric acid is the basis of a multi-billion dollar industry with uses including agricultural fertilizers, rocket propellant, and nylon. Thus, there is great potential for recouping the costs of using the MOF technology and even profiting from it.

It would be great to convert a toxic pollutant into valuable industrial chemicals.

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Clean air research converts toxic air pollutant into industrial chemical

Photo courtesy of the University of Manchester.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Giant Seaweed Bloom

August 19, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Scientists using data from NASA satellites have discovered and documented the largest bloom of seaweed in the world, stretching all the way from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico. The gigantic macroalgae bloom has been dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt.

The brown seaweed floats in surface water and in recent years has become a problem to shorelines lining the tropical Atlantic, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and east coast of Florida. The stuff carpets popular beach destinations and crowded coastal waters. In 2018, more than 20 million tons of it floated on the ocean surface.

Scientists have been studying the Sargassum algae using satellites since 2006, but the major blooms have only started appearing since 2011. They have occurred every year between 2011 and 2018 except for 2013. Before 2011, most of the free-floating Sargassum in the ocean was primarily found in patches around the Gulf of Mexico and the Sargasso Sea located on the western edge of the central Atlantic Ocean.

Sargassum provides habitat for turtles, crabs, fish and birds, and produces oxygen via photosynthesis. However, too much of it can crowd out many marine species.

According to researchers, the ocean’s chemistry must have changed in order for the bloom to get so out of hand. The factors involved include a large seed population left over from a previous bloom, nutrient input from West Africa, and nutrient input from the Amazon River. The increase in nutrients may be a result of deforestation and fertilizer use.

Climate-change effects on precipitation and ocean currents ultimately do play a role in this, but increased ocean temperatures do not. Unfortunately, these giant seaweed blooms are probably here to stay.

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NASA Satellites Find Biggest Seaweed Bloom in the World

Photo courtesy of NASA.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Why Choose Chicken Over Beef?

July 22, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Food production is a major driver of climate change. It’s responsible for more than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. But the environmental impact of different foods varies greatly, and making seemingly insignificant changes can actually have significant impacts.

According to a first-ever national study of U.S. eating habits and their carbon footprints, choosing chicken over beef will cut your dietary carbon footprint in half.

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey asked more than 16,000 participating Americans to name all the foods they consumed in the past 24 hours. The research team then calculated the carbon footprint of what people said they ate. If a respondent consumed broiled beef steak, for example, researchers calculated what the carbon footprint would have been had broiled chicken been consumed instead.

The study’s findings illustrate how making one simple substitution can significantly reduce a person’s dietary carbon footprint. A diet’s carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that result from the energy, fertilizer, land use, and other inputs necessary to produce food.

In general, animal-based foods have a bigger carbon footprint than plant-based foods. For example, producing beef uses 20 times the land and emits 20 times the emissions as growing beans (per gram of protein), and requires 10 times more resources than producing chicken.

According to the World Resources Institute, keeping the increase in global warming below 2°C will be impossible without limiting the global rise in meat consumption.

Last year, the EAT-Lancet Commission report found that a radical transformation of the global food system was needed because it’s threatening the stability of the climate.

Make a change – big or small – today.

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